


A Library Story

by Shihanne



Category: Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25828759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shihanne/pseuds/Shihanne
Summary: An incidental trip to the library through past records reveals to two siblings the truth behind some less-than-pleasant revelations about their own father's past.
Relationships: Ichijouji Ken/Inoue Miyako | Yolei Inoue
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	A Library Story

“If you hadn’t been putting this project off for _months_ now, we wouldn’t have to be doing this…”

“Sorry, Chisato…But I don’t have any other choice…”

“Just don’t do it next time, got it?”

Entering the public library was an annoyed-looking girl, pulling her younger brother behind her in a huff. Her brother looked incredibly embarrassed, but was sheepishly tagging along. The older sister had a Poromon in her other arm, while the boy had a Minomon dangling from his.

“I’ll help you find what you need, but you’re on your own for the rest. And you can’t keep asking me to do this kind of thing for you.”

“I know, I know…I’m sorry…”

The two of them headed for the newspaper archive and put their Digimon partners down, and started to search through what they had available.

“You need something from the 2000s, right? Any particular topic?” asked Chisato.

“Just anything from then,” said her brother. “Earlier is better, though.”

“Right, right.”

The two of them started flipping through the archives, while their partners snooped around the area. Every so often one of them would pull out an article that seemed fitting and the two of them would discuss it, and, slowly, a pile of usable old newspapers and magazine articles had started to amass.

“I’m so glad we got all of these,” said the younger brother. “I was really worried we wouldn’t find anything, but as we thought, they haven’t uploaded all of the content online yet…”

He turned to look at his sister, only to find that she was frozen staring at a certain article that she’d picked up.

“…Chisato?”

Chisato was staring directly at one of the articles she’d picked up, or, more specifically, a photo on it.

“Hey…Tarou, look at this…”

Without removing her gaze from the picture, she took her finger and traced her hand over it. Tarou quickly came up and peered over her shoulder.

The photo showed a young boy, somewhere in his preteens, smiling lightly at the camera. The article carried the caption _Interview with Tokyo’s up-and-coming genius boy, Ichijouji Ken_.

“…That’s Papa, isn’t it?” said Chisato.

“…Yeah.”

The two of them had seen tons of pictures of their father as a kid, but this was the first time either of them had seen this photo – let alone in a context like this.

“…Genius boy? Have you heard anything about this? From Mama or anything?”

Tarou shook his head.

“Genius boy, all-rounded proficiency in both academics and athletics, toe-to-toe with adults in various competitions…I never heard anything about this…” said Chisato.

Turning away from the photo, Tarou started digging through the same file cabinet Chisato had pulled the article from. Around ten minutes later, he started tugging at her sleeve.

“Chisato. Chisato, look.”

He showed her another article – this time with no photo, and a much smaller one: “ _Genius” boy Ichijouji Ken abruptly found to be missing from home in Tamachi, Tokyo_.

“…Missing?!” yelped Chisato.

Tarou and the three other Digimon all simultaneously glared at her and went _shhhhhhh_.

Chisato bit her lip and went back to whispering. “This…happened?! But he’s here with us right now…”

The two of them continued to stare at the article, with their Digimon partners peering over it. Chisato’s hands were starting to shake. This…was something she wanted to ask her parents about.

But how should she just… _approach_ her parents about it? _Hey, can you tell me about that time Papa got praised as a “genius boy” and then somehow went missing back in 2002?_

Every potential option seemed like a mountain to climb, but the curiosity and anxiety was now eating away at her.

* * *

Their father was still at work when they returned home, and their mother was busy washing the dishes with her partner Hawkmon.

“Welcome home,” she said, not lifting her head from the dishes. “Did you get what you needed?”

“Yeah…” muttered Tarou.

The moment their mother heard Tarou’s tone of voice, she immediately shut off the water faucet and turned to look at them. “…Hm? You don’t look good. Did something happen?”

As usual, there was no way to hide their feelings from their mother. She could see through them all too well.

“W-Well…” said Chisato. “We were looking through newspaper articles, and we found one about Papa, actually…”

“Oh? What about?”

“Well…they were really weird,” said Tarou, his obvious anxiety poking even further through his words. “They were talking about him being some kind of super-genius boy, and then him suddenly having disappeared from his home…”

Their mother suddenly made a loud and abrupt “ _aaaaaaaaaaaah!_ ” noise, and quickly paced over to where her children were. Hawkmon, who had been scrubbing leftover dishes during that time, also stopped and came to walk over.

“Miyako-san, is this about…”

“Probably, yeah,” she said. She bent down slightly next to the siblings to look at what they were carrying. “Can I see?”

Without protesting, Chisato handed over the articles with her father’s name that she’d found at the library.

Her mother looked over the articles, but, to Chisato’s surprise, she wasn’t scrutinizing them very closely, and nodded multiple times as she got the gist. “Yeah, it’s about _that_.”

“So you _do_ know?” asked Tarou.

Their mother nodded.

“There’s some missing context here. See, back then, the world didn’t know much about Chosen Children or the Digital World, so as far as they were concerned, your Papa had ‘disappeared’.”

“Ohhhhhh!” said Tarou, clapping his hands together. “So he was in the Digital World that whole time!”

“Right,” said their mother. “But as you can see, he’s fine and with us right now, so it all worked out.”

Chisato nodded in comprehension, but she still seemed somewhat concerned. “So what about the genius boy thing?”

“Well, that one…” said her mother, looking at the relevant article. “The truth is, he _was_ recognized as that for a while, but then the disappearance thing happened, and by the time he came back, he didn’t really like being seen that way. Thought it gave him too much attention that he felt he didn’t deserve, among other things. So your grandparents requested privacy on his behalf, and eventually the world moved onto more interesting topics than some genius boy from a few news articles.”

“I see…” said Chisato, pursing her lips a little.

Their mother handed back the articles. “He doesn’t really like to be seen that way, so try not to think too hard about it. Although don’t get me wrong, he’s still very clever and smart. But you knew that, right?” She winked at them, and Tarou, significantly more at ease, laughed lightly.

Chisato, on the other hand, still looked a little uncertain, although her mother’s words were convincing enough that she nodded and accepted the explanation.

She did not notice the expression on Hawkmon’s face that also looked equally as uneasy.

* * *

The siblings’ father had been tied up with work late enough that they were unfortunately unable to have dinner with him, and, despite desperately wanting to see him after the events of that day, their mother had instructed them to go to bed on time.

It was late at night when he returned home, with his wife ready to greet him at the door.

“Welcome home,” she said, warmly. “Things went pretty late today.”

“Nothing much of a big deal, just a lot of paperwork,” said her husband. “I’m starving, though…”

“Good work, as always. I’ve already got dinner ready,” she said.

“Piping off the stove!” said Hawkmon, very proud of their work.

Her husband laughed gently. “Thank you. Good work to you, too.”

He sat down at the table with his partner Wormmon, and fed his partner a few bites before helping himself.

His wife smiled at him happily as he started to eat, and then looked down at the table a little glumly. “Hey, so…the kids went to the library today, and they found some articles with you in it.”

“Hm?”

“About the genius boy thing, and about the disappearance thing.”

“Ah…” He nodded while pursing his lips, but continued to put food on his plate. “What’d you tell them?”

“Nothing too specific. Just some context on what happened, but not…the finer details about…all that,” said his wife, sighing a little. “But you know how they are, especially Chisato, so…I think it won’t be long before they figure out the full story.”

“Right, right. Do you want me to talk to them?”

His wife shook her head.

“I don’t think there’s any way we could tell them the details without making it come off in the wrong way. Like – “ (here she adopted a voice as if mocking herself) “ – _so your Papa had this brief dictatorial phase as a kid and almost killed your Mama and her friends a few times_ – “ (her voice went back to normal here) “…and unless they’re on their way to figuring it out themselves, that’s just gonna frame the whole situation in the wrong way, you know?”

Despite the heavy content of what his wife had just said, her husband laughed at her own absurd way of putting it, as did even Wormmon from the side.

“I’d rather come clean about it as soon as possible,” said her husband, “but yeah, you’re probably right…”

His wife nodded. “But they’ll probably find out very soon anyway, so…”

“It’s fine,” said her husband, going back to eating. “I’ve been prepared for something like this since before Chisato was even born, anyway.”

His wife nodded again. She reached her hand for the other side of the table and grabbed her husband’s left hand.

Even though he was supposed to be in the middle of eating, he responded by squeezing it tighter.

* * *

As her parents had predicted, Chisato was so bothered by this in the middle of the night that she went down the bunk bed and poked her brother.

“Tarou. Tarou.”

Having not been sleeping himself, Tarou turned around to glare at her for disturbing him. “What?”

“Doesn’t it still bother you?”

“The newspaper articles, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“A little, but…”

Chisato shook her head irritably – unlike Tarou, she was having severe difficulty accepting their mother’s explanation by itself, even though she didn’t know why. “It was…weird. I know Mama had an explanation, but it was weird. I’ve seen pictures of Papa before, but there was something… _off_ about it, you know? And then this whole thing about a genius boy competing with adults…”

Tarou sat up on the bed and rubbed his eyes a little. “Something off?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m not saying that Papa isn’t smart or anything like that, but the…the _image_ is just completely different. It’s like I was looking at someone with Papa’s name and face, but from a parallel universe.”

Tarou put a finger to his chin, thinking about it. “Well, Mama said that the disappearance was because he was fighting in the Digital World, so…maybe we should check the Digital World records instead?”

Chisato slammed a fist to her palm. “Ah! You’re right!”

“Maybe we should go check tomorrow,” said Poromon, looking down at the siblings from the top bunk.

Tarou nodded, and looked at Minomon. “Does that sound okay?”

“Yeah!” said Minomon, who was clearly still very sleepy, but up for anything.

Tarou lay back down on the bed and pulled the blankets over his head. “…But please let me sleep for now.”

“Fine, fine…”

Chisato climbed back up onto her bunk and lay flat on the bed.

_Tomorrow, huh._

* * *

As soon as the two were done with school, they immediately went home and headed to the Digital World. They headed for a library known to be extensive with Digital World history and records – although they hadn’t been to it before, its reputation was well-known enough that the siblings were sure that any relevant info they needed to find must be there.

“Welcome,” said the Falcomon at the desk. “Is there anything you’re looking for?”

“We’re looking for things regarding the history of the Digital World,” said Chisato, “most importantly things like…things that might have threatened its safety over the years.”

“I see, I see,” said the Falcomon. “Right this way, then.”

The Falcomon led them over to a wide gallery of history books. “Would this be sufficient?”

“I think we can take it from here. Thank you very much.”

The Falcomon returned to the desk, and the two siblings and their Digimon started to look through the bookshelves for anything that could be useful (or, at least, as much as Poromon and Minomon could in the absence of usable limbs).

“Did you bring the article?” said Tarou.

Chisato nodded and pulled it out. “We’re looking for…May 2002, or something around that area.”

“Right.”

Looking through Digital World records was difficult since it had only been in the last twenty years or so that Digital World and human world history had properly synchronized, so they had to look through the most contemporary of contemporary things in comparison. Given that the Digital World didn’t even use the same dating system, there were several false starts, especially as the Digital World constantly seemed to be barraged with more and more threats with every passing year.

Finally, Tarou poked Chisato in the shoulder. “Chisato, I think I found something, but…”

Chisato looked over Tarou’s shoulder at the book he was reading.

_The Digimon Kaiser was known as the first notable case of a human threat to the Digital World, who used his abilities as a Chosen Child to set up Dark Towers, emblems of distortion that inhibited evolution, around the Digital World to claim his own territory. Using the power of his black D-3, he used Evil Rings and later Evil Spirals to control Digimon and make them into his own slaves, and a large number of Digimon casualties were incurred in the ensuing war. Ultimately, he manufactured an abominable creation named Chimeramon, made from the body parts of multiple Digimon, which caused an incredible amount of destruction. Eventually, Chimeramon was defeated by a group of active Chosen Children at the time, and the Kaiser receded after the death of his own Digimon partner Wormmon. Records of his later actions remain relatively obscure, but there are some active eyewitness reports of him being active as a Chosen Child with his reborn partner in various efforts to protect the Digital World, although said reports remain disputed to this day._

Neither Tarou nor Chisato could say anything, even though they were thinking the same thing. Saying it out loud felt like crystallizing things into reality that they didn’t want to acknowledge.

There was no photo in the book, but it was impossible to rationalize it any other way. Converting the dates given in the book gave an approximate chronology of around April to August 2002, which matched up with what they knew from the newspaper article about their father’s childhood “disappearance”. A partner Wormmon, and a black D-3…the color of her father’s had always left an impression on Chisato since she had rarely seen anything else like it.

“…I’m not accepting this.”

Chisato’s voice was shaking.

“Chisato?” said Tarou, looking at his sister, with his own voice full of anxiety.

“I’m…I’m not accepting this. I can’t accept this at _all_. Papa wouldn’t do this. I know he wouldn’t. We know him well enough. _I’m not accepting this!!_ ”

Tarou looked at her, somewhat panicking, as Chisato’s voice got louder and louder. He hated seeing her like this. Although she was a very straightforward and honest person when it came to her feelings, it was _very_ rare that she’d let herself lose her composure to this extent, but at this point, she was no longer capable of restraining her feelings any longer.

Her voice still quivering and her breaths heavy, she grabbed Poromon and ran off.

“Chisato!”

But it was too late – Chisato had run out of the library, sobbing.

* * *

_I’m not accepting this._

Chisato had immediately beelined back to her home and her room, climbed up her bunk, and buried her head in her pillow, crying.

“Chisato…” said Poromon.

But even her partner could not reach her in this state.

Her father would not do this. The father she knew would not do this.

Not her Papa, who, even when he came home late, had always checked on her and how she was doing and how things were going at school, and always gave her advice with the kindest smile. Not the one who had immediately come to her as soon as she started crying, sometimes even faster than her mother would (not an easy task), listen to her patiently, and hold her hand and give her all the support she needed. Not the one with possibly the strongest sense of justice of anyone she knew, who always warned her and her brother about the right thing to do and how to treat others with kindness.

And most _especially_ not the Papa who, that day, when she had gotten in trouble with the teachers at school due to an accidental fit of rage and come home absolutely certain that she would be punished, had only sat down with her and sternly but not harshly reminded her of what she needed to remember and how she should apologize.

She had left Tarou at the library, and she hadn’t read the text of the book again since, but the words were burned into her skull and wouldn’t leave. Emblems of distortion…Slaves…Large number of casualties…Abominable creation…

The only reason her wails weren’t audible was that they were smashed into her pillow.

_How am I supposed to think about this?_

_What am I supposed to do?_

_What reality am I supposed to accept?_

* * *

Tarou returned with Minomon a few hours later, by which time both parents and their Digimon partners were home. Chisato had cried herself to sleep, and apparently had successfully hidden it well enough that neither of their parents had noticed, thinking that she was just tired and taking a nap.

Tarou, on the other hand, was not going to let this opportunity by.

He slowly stepped outside, closed the door behind him, and approached his father’s Wormmon, who looked at them innocently.

“Um, this is probably a little sudden, but Chisato wanted to ask you something,” said Tarou.

“Oh? Okay, whatever she needs!”

He slowly followed Tarou back to the siblings’ room, and Tarou, staring straight at the door as he approached it, didn’t notice his father’s eye following them from the other side.

* * *

Tarou pushed the door closed behind him. The noise slowly woke Chisato up, and she peered over the bunk bed edge.

“Ah…Wormmon…”

Wormmon immediately noticed the tense aura in the air, Chisato’s mood, and the incredible suspiciousness of Tarou closing the door behind.

“W-What is it?”

“This is probably a very awkward topic to talk about, so I’m sorry to have to ask,” said Tarou, “but we were doing research in the Digital World library and we read something about a ‘Digimon Kaiser’, and we were wondering if you knew anything about – ”

“It wasn’t Ken-chan’s fault.”

Wormmon answered with a shocking amount of abruptness to the point even Chisato, half-awake, was taken aback. He looked at the two siblings resolutely with a look that absolutely did not fit that of someone talking about something relevant to their own death.

“Not…his fault?”

Wormmon confidently continued, as if he’d practiced what he was saying for years. “A long time ago, Ken-chan’s friend was attacked by a really strong Digimon, and Ken-chan took an attack in his place, and a Dark Seed went into his neck.”

“A Dark Seed…” said Chisato, slowly trying to piece the information she was receiving with a half-conscious, still heavily distraught head.

“The Dark Seed turned him into a completely different person. I couldn’t recognize Ken-chan anymore. But in the end Ken-chan won and took his true heart back, and went back to being the real Ken-chan.”

“An attack from a Digimon…that turns you into a completely different person…” said Tarou, lost in thought.

“Well,” said a voice from the door, “I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t my fault, though.”

The siblings, their partners, and Wormmon turned to face none other than the siblings’ father, who was standing at the door that Tarou had failed to completely close.

“P-Papa…” said Tarou. “I’m sorry, we…”

“You shouldn’t need to apologize. It’s just hard for me to not notice when you go sneaking around like that, you know…” He laughed, lightly, and yet a little sadly. “If anything, I’m the one sorry that you had to learn about your own Papa’s sordid past this way. Your Mama was afraid about being straightforward with it, and she’s usually right about these things, but maybe we should have reconsidered…”

Chisato was slowly coming down the ladder of the bunk bed.

“So what _actually_ happened?” said Tarou.

Their father sat down on the floor, with his partner Wormmon climbing up his shoulder. He gave a few pats to Wormmon’s head and closed his eyes.

“Well, it’s a long story, and it’s hard to know where to begin and how far to go…But everything you’ve heard about it is probably true. There was a Dark Seed, but in the end it’s my own fault for succumbing to my own heart’s weaknesses…”

“But you’re the one who brought back yourself, Ken-chan,” said Wormmon.

“Maybe, but that was thanks to you, too,” said the siblings’ father. “And, also, your uncle Daisuke…” He tilted his head towards the door. “…and your Mama, too.”

“Mama, too…” said Chisato.

She mulled over the words from the book that she still remembered all too well. There had been something about “a group of Chosen Children” in there, and she remembered how her mother had always described how she’d met her husband – by being fellow Chosen Children and fighting alongside him.

So this was what she meant – by being part of that group that had fought up against him, and then saved him.

Breaking out into tears yet again, Chisato suddenly rushed over from the bunk ladder and embraced her father, who was taken slightly back at the suddenness of it.

“I knew it,” said Chisato, through her tears. “I _knew_ I wasn’t wrong about my Papa, I knew, I believed, I…”

She hadn’t been wrong.

The father in front of her was the father she knew. It was still a shock to hear about such things that had happened in the past, and it would take her a while to truly parse it – in the end, maybe she’d put her own father on too much of a pedestal after all. But nevertheless, the father in front of her was her true father after all, and that was all she needed to know at that moment.

Her father looked down at her and smiled, and looked back up at his son, putting a hand on his head and ruffling his hair a bit.

“I’d say having two treasures like you is saving me, too.”

Although he was significantly less openly emotionally compromised than Chisato was, Tarou nodded.

* * *

As they were eating dinner together, Chisato was enough in a better mood to start lapsing back into her usual gossipy self.

“Hey, Mama…”

“Hm? What is it?” said her mother, looking back at her cheerfully.

“So, like…the first time you met Papa, you were technically fighting against him, right? But then you ended up on the same team, and then you fell in love and got married, right? So how did _that_ happen?”

“Chisato, you can’t just _ask_ something like that!” said Poromon, next to her.

But her mother giggled, and from the other side of the table, the siblings’ father was also looking up from his food with a smile breaking out from the corner of his face.

“Well, let’s see,” their mother started, with a grin on her face and an expression indicating that she was reminiscing in far more detail than an event of such a long time ago should suggest.

“There was this dam that needed protecting, you see…”

**Author's Note:**

> The eternal question of "how do Ken and Miyako's kids find out about their father's sordid past" has been a common point of questioning for anyone who's thought too hard about the Ichijouji family, so this certainly is not the first ever attempt at tackling this question, but I thought I should take a whack at it anyway. I did consider integrating this into the narrative for Glasses Girl (which I'm currently rethinking, in spite of all odds) at first, but that story explicitly by design has to be told from Miyako's perspective, whereas this absolutely needs to be told from the kids', so the story became its own oneshot instead.
> 
> "Chisato" and "Tarou" are not names I'm particularly married to -- they were names I used for a oneshot several years ago (when I was a significantly more inexperienced writer) and I simply haven't felt in the mood to change them since then. Since they're names I initially thought up on a whim, I might change them sometime in the future if I come up with anything better, but this is what I'm sticking with for now.
> 
> This is intended to take place in approximately early 2026, so the third child hasn't been born yet. "Mama" and "Papa" come from 02 itself; Ken's own family used this sort of super-affectionate language between themselves over the second half of the series, and the epilogue indicates that this has apparently carried over to the second generation, so I stuck with it.


End file.
